Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-06-10-Speech-1-096"
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"en.20020610.5.1-096"2
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". – Mr President, I am greatly relieved as rapporteur in this case to finally have the opportunity of presenting this report before the House, whether it be rejected or accepted in the end. I have been a Member of the House for just under three years and for nearly all that time I have been honoured to be one of the rapporteurs on parliamentary privilege and immunity for the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market. One of the earliest tasks assigned to me was a bundle of requests from Members from Italy, or from their lawyers, concerning their concern that prosecutions or other legal actions were taking place in Italy which violated their immunity.
Our Rules of Procedure which will I hope be amended in the light of the Duff report make elaborate provision for the steps Parliament should take in order to decide whether or not to waive immunity on receipt of a request from the proper authorities of the Member State. The problem in the Italian cases was that no request had been received other than from the Members themselves and this gave rise to concern. If it were the case that privileges or immunities enjoyed by Members of this House were being ignored by a Member State that would be a serious matter.
The point that I would make, and the Duff report makes here, is that the privileges and immunities of this House exist not to expand the rights of Members as citizens beyond those of other citizens. They exist solely to protect the dignity of this assembly as a European legislature and to protect the conditions of effective and free democratic debate in it.
If it were case that Members could show that their position as Members of this House, as legislators on the European scene, was being prejudiced by conduct of a Member State and there was no way to bring this before the House solely because no appropriate authority in a Member State had sought to have the immunity waived, this would in itself be clearly an unsatisfactory state of affairs.
The House possesses immunity under two different provisions. Under Article 9 of the Protocol of 1965, Members enjoy immunity from any form of enquiry, detention or legal proceedings in respect of opinions expressed or votes cast by them in the performance of their duties. There are other immunities which arise in other circumstances where the immunity a Member enjoys is equivalent to that of a Member of a Member State parliament in their own Member State and in other Member States, an immunity from prosecution except with the agreement of Parliament.
After a great deal of study, it became clear that what was at issue in all the cases before us was only an issue concerning Article 9 of the Protocol. It was the issue of whether prosecutions taken against Members for opinions they were expressing or had expressed violated the immunity they enjoy under Article 9. Our Rules of Procedure are silent on what we should do in that case. It seems to me that as a democratic legislative assembly, we must have some inherent power to draw it to the attention of Member States if the conditions of free debate are being violated in this House.
Taking that view of the matter, the Committee looked over the cases and in all respects save one accepted the recommendations which I was minded to put forward. Looking at the cases as clearly and candidly as possible, it seems to me that Mr Speroni's was one where because matters were asked concerning an explanation of votes in the House he was clearly being called to account for an opinion expressed in the exercise of his functions. Mr Marra's case was one in which documents published by Mr Marra is his capacity as a Member had, in a complex way, given rise to prosecutions or judicial allegations.
These seem to be clear cases where Article 9 was in issue. The Committee thought, but I do not think, that Mr Dell'Utri's case was the same. The reason why I differed from the Committee is that in Mr Dell'Utri's case, the statements made, whatever their truth and whatever their legal character, were made several years before Mr Dell'Utri became a Member of the House. I cannot see any sensible reading of a provision concerning opinions expressed or votes cast by us in the performance of our duties which relates to statements we make before we become Members. You cannot equate a candidate for office with a holder of office. This goes for ourselves in our capacities as candidates, by the way.
I therefore recommend to the House that we take the action suggested in my report and that we draw these cases to the attention of the Italian authorities. My own Parliamentary group has moved an amendment to take the name of Mr Dell'Utri out of the report and I personally believe that it is the right course to take. I hope I have given an account to colleagues of why I think it is right course to take and that it is simply a matter of an objective and fair-minded reading of the Protocol rather than an attempt to engage in a political judgement either way about the state of affairs in the Italian Republic."@en1
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